{"id":4,"date":"2006-06-19T19:52:00","date_gmt":"2006-06-19T19:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/?p=4"},"modified":"2015-03-06T22:42:33","modified_gmt":"2015-03-07T03:42:33","slug":"the-trinity-doctrine-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/the-trinity-doctrine-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"“the” Trinity doctrine – Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"nuts\"The traditional Christian doctrine of the Trinity is commonly expressed as<\/strong> the claim that the one God “exists as” Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or as the claim that there are three divine persons “in” God, or as the claim that God “exists in three Persons”.<\/p>\n

I have to say: this drives me nuts. The “exists as” formula strongly suggests modalism<\/strong>, the idea that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are simply three ways in which God lives, or three ways in which God interacts with humanity, or three ways in which God appears to us.<\/p>\n

Now there are a lot of things wrong with modalism (more in future postings), but for now, consider this: trinitarian theories are supposed to be by definition incompatible with<\/em> modalism – i.e. claims which, if they’re true, then it follows that modalism is false. Put differently, modalism is a classic heresy, that trinitiarian thinking is designed to avoid.<\/p>\n

You may be reading this and saying “What the heck? What you’re calling “modalism”, is just what I thought the doctrine of the Trinity was!”<\/strong> Well, there’s a reason why many people have that reaction, but that’s a topic for a future post. For now, here’s some of the back story<\/a> on modalism, and the boilerplate apologetics explanation of what is wrong with it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So what is wrong with saying “there are three persons in God” or that “God exists in three persons”. Nothing is wrong with it – unless you want to be clearly understood! The problem is that pesky little word “in”<\/strong>. I won’t try to catalogue all of the concepts that the English word “in” can express, but here are a few:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. spatial inclusion – There is milk in my class.<\/li>\n
  2. set membership – 2 is in the even numbers.<\/li>\n
  3. parts-whole relation – My heart is in my circulatory system.<\/li>\n
  4. what it’s made of – Her sculpture of Carrot Top was in cheddar cheese.<\/li>\n
  5. faculty possession – Reason and will are in me, and every other normal human being.<\/li>\n
  6. class membership – Lions and tigers are in the cat family.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Now go back to “there are three Persons in God”. What might this mean? 1-2 seem irrelevant, but what about 3-6? Are we saying, for example, that the Father is a part of God? (3) Or that he’s made of the divine stuff? (4) Or just that he’s divine (6)? Or is the Father being “in God” equivalent to “God relates to us as Father” or “God is fatherly” (5)? (Doh! Modalism again…)<\/p>\n

    So my suggestion is that the ways of talking discussed here are unhelpful<\/strong>, and should be avoided. They are ambiguous at best, and heretical at worst. It’s best to say what we mean.<\/p>\n

    Q: What do you <\/em>mean when you say “I believe in the Trinity”? If you met someone totally unfamiliar with the concept, how would you briefly explain it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The traditional Christian doctrine of the Trinity is commonly expressed as the claim that the one God “exists as” Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or as the claim that there are three divine persons “in” God, or as the claim that God “exists in three Persons”. I have to say: this drives me nuts. The… Read More »“the” Trinity doctrine – Part 1<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35042,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,4,5,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-complaints","category-heresy-orthodoxy","category-modalism","category-theories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35043,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4\/revisions\/35043"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}